From Blake Morrison’s very interesting Guardian piece about whether editing is going to the dogs:

Perhaps I’ve been unusually lucky, but in my experience, editors, far from coercing and squashing writers, do exactly the opposite, elucidating them and drawing them out, or, when they’re exhausted and on the point of giving up (like marathon runners hitting the wall), coaxing them to go the extra mile. And yet this myth of the destructive editor—the dolt with the blue pencil—is pervasive, not least in academe. Perhaps the antipathy stems from the perceived difference between the publisher and the scholar: for whereas a scholarly editor, appearing late in the day and with the wisdom of hindsight, seeks to restore a classic, the publisher’s editor is the idiot who ruined it in the first place.

A good illustration of this antipathy is the Cambridge edition of DH Lawrence. “Here at last is Sons and Lovers in full: uncut and uncensored,” the editors of the 1992 Cambridge edition crow triumphantly. Their introduction goes on to allege that in being reduced by 10%, the text was “mangled”; that the editor Edward Garnett’s censorship was “coy and intrusive”; that Lawrence “reacted to Garnett’s decision to cut the novel with ‘sadness and grief’, but was powerless to resist”; and that when Garnett told him further cuts were to be made, Lawrence “exploded” with rage.

Read Lawrence’s letters and you get a rather different impression. “All right,” he tells Garnett, “take out what you think necessary,” and gives him licence to do as he sees fit: “I don’t mind what you squash out … I feel always so deep in your debt.” Lawrence was short of money, it’s true, and had his mind on other things, having recently eloped with Frieda. Even so, when he writes that “the thought of you pedgilling away at the novel frets me” (pedgilling, a nice coinage, a cross between pencilling and abridging), the fret isn’t what Garnett will do to the text, it’s that the task is an unfair imposition: “Why can’t I do those things?” And when Lawrence is finally sent proofs, he’s not unhappy. “You did the pruning jolly well,” he tells Garnett, and dedicates the book to him: “I wish I weren’t so profuse – or prolix, or whatever it is.”

It’s true that, just as some writers write too much, some editors edit too much. As the New Yorker writer Renata Adler acerbically puts it, there are those who “cannot leave a text intact, eating through it leaf and branch, like tent caterpillars, leaving everywhere their mark”. When he edited the magazine Granta, Bill Buford was sometimes accused of being overbearingly interventionist—in his spare time he hung out with football hooligans, and it was said he brought the same thuggishness to editing, though personally I never found him brutal in the least. At the other extreme are the quiet, nurturing sorts, the editors who ease you through so gently that when they do tamper with the text you barely notice and can kid yourself they did no work at all. Frank O’Connor compared his editor William Maxwell to “a good teacher who does not say ‘Imitate me’ but ‘This is what I think you are trying to say’.”

This brings to mind that pleasantly esoteric controversy about whether Gordon Lish did too much for Raymond Carver. Fiction editing does seem to be in some distress lately, at least within the high-literary blockbusters we’re invited to read at extended-dance-remix length. Could someone kindly remind these lads about cutting? No, not the bad kind with a razor in the girls’ bathroom, the good kind that makes your novel better. Also, assorted forms of weirdness and questionable behavior aside, Renata Adler is a hell of a fiction writer. If you haven’t read Pitch Dark, I envy you the experience of finding out for the first time how frightening and lovely it is.

Black Day for the Blue Pencil [Guardian]
The Continuing Dissent of Renata Adler [Moby Lives]

Like many warmhearted Americans, I’ve come to love Martha Stewart, and this is the month to buy a single share of Martha Stewart Omnimedia from One Share for that multitasking lady in your life, or perhaps for your small child (My First Stock: “Our gift of stock was the perfect catalyst for the future of our daughter.” —Sarah from California). MSO is the Share of the Month, and that means it’s 10% off.

As incentive, the cheerful people at One Share write: “After serving hard time, Martha Stewart is ready for prime time. Her new talk show is in production, along with a highly anticipated Apprentice spinoff!” They also suggest: “Nothing beats a kitchen decorated with a framed share of Martha Stewart stock to inspire your cooking! The Martha Stewart Stock Certificate features yellow scroll work on one side, and the unique company’s logo at top center. Now, housewives can boast to their husbands that they are Martha Stewart stock shareholders.” You can choose from one of a number of witty wooden plaques other customers have designed (see above), or write your own. The possibilities are endless.

The stock: $26. The frame: $44. The transfer fee: $39. Share of the Month discount: $10. Grand subtotal: $99. A bargain, when you think about it.

A Talk of the Town from July, 1951 (in an issue containing a gigantic full-color illustration suggesting you try Guinness with your lobster—”The heartening flavor of Guinness Stout seems to make the lobster taste even better”—Ella Fitzergald and the Weavers at Café Society; Strangers on a Train at the Warner and also reviewed: “The pictorial legerdemain finally winds up in a rooty-tooty fashion, with our two young gentlemen engaged in a death grapple on a runaway carousel”; Guys and Dolls at the 46th Street Theatre; a short and sad obituary for Sam Cobean; Genêt’s Letter From Rome, barbed editorials within the listings—for El Morocco, “Selected species of local and West Coast fauna, staring in rapture at people they haven’t seen since lunch”—places to dine while out motoring, Rocky Marciano vs. Rex Layne at the Garden; and J.D. Salinger’s “Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes” as the lead article):

The most encouraging word we have so far had about television came from a grade-school principal we encountered the other afternoon. “They say it’s going to bring back vaudeville,” he said, “but I think it’s going to bring back the book.” Before television, he told us, his pupils never read; that is, they knew how to read and could do it in school, but their reading ended there. Their entertainment was predominantly pictorial and auditory—movies, comic books, radio. Now, the principal said, news summaries are typed out and displayed on the screen to the accompaniment of soothing music, the opening pages of dramatized novels are shown, words are written on blackboards in quiz and panel programs, commercials are spelled out in letters made up of dancing cigarettes, and even the packages of cleansers and breakfast foods that the announcers exhibit for identification bear printed messages. It’s only a question of time, our principal felt, before the new literacy of the television audience reaches a point where whole books can be held up to the screen and their pages slowly turned.

The virtue of the dancing cigarettes (pictured in a Spot) could, perhaps, be questioned in retrospect. Edmund Wilson notes in his review of bug books:

It is the opinion of Mr. Vladimir Nabokov, who is a distinguished lepidopterist as well as a novelist and a poet, that the markings of moths and butterflies, so amazing for the complex detail by which they achive protective mimicry, have been carried to a point that in some cases overshoots the aim or actually defeats it, a point that suggests, on the butterfly’s part, a gratuitious aesthetic effort. One wishes that our own human species, if it must drop to an instinctual level, would get going on this tack.

The Talk is unsigned, of course, and my first question about the forthcoming DVD archive will be whether it reveals, as with a Yes & Know pen, the identities of decades of clever devils. I think it does, but I’ll let you know. Here’s a bewitching poem by Louise Bogan:

Train Tune

Back through clouds
Back through clearing
Back through distance
Back through silence

Back through groves
Back through garlands
Back by rivers
Back below mountains

Back through lightning
Back through cities
Back through stars
Back through hours

Back through plains
Back through flowers
Back through birds
Back through rain

Back through smoke
Back through noon
Back along love
Back through midnight

That’s worth memorizing, I think. Finally, a message from the American Viscose Corporation (“America’s largest producer of rayon”) about men’s brave struggle for emancipation through textiles:

Now—a single standard of comfort!

Time was when women had a monopoly on comfort. Men struggled through seething summers clad in heavy fabrics…squirmed through steam heated winters dressed for the old open fireplace days.

But not your present modern-minded gentlemen. He demands equal rights to comfort—and dresses to suit his surroundings—in rayon.

Yes, away with the double standard! Given that his rayon-admiring Miss Modern is probably being smooshed all kinds of ways by assorted foundation garments, however, I’m not so sure the gentleman hasn’t come out ahead.

I’m not the only one missing the August 8th issue, says Customer Service over there at Subscriptions in Boone, Iowa. They are lovely people and they are sending me a copy forthwith. By the way, Boone has nothing to do with the word “boondocks”; says wordorigins.org:

Boondocks is a relic of American colonialism. British English imported lots of words from its far-flung colonial possessions, but American colonial aspirations mainly produced words derived from Spanish and adopted with the settling of the West. This one, however, is an exception. It derives from the Tagalog word bundok, meaning “mountain.” It was adopted into the language by occupying American soldiers in the Philippines as a word meaning any remote and wild place. By 1909, only some ten years after the American conquest of the islands, the word had caught on enough to rate an entry in that year’s Webster’s New International Dictionary. Despite this, however, it remained primarily a military slang term, especially among Marines, until the 1960s, when, probably because of the Vietnam War, it gained wider, civilian usage.

Categories: NYer, Issue, &c.

“Some colleagues, objecting on grounds of anthropomorphism, will undoubtedly insist that I go too far when I suggest that high humidity acts on our inner life in the same manner as a wrathful mother.”
—Tom the analyst in Donald Antrim’s The Verificationist

Esteemed book acolyte Nancy Pearl repents, reprieves, and reprises:

Book Lust, the 2003 predecessor to her readers’ guide [More Book Lust], remains popular. Barnes & Noble Inc.’s flagship store in Seattle at the University Village shopping mall keeps 38 copies in stock, compared with one or two for most books, says Cameron Morrison, a spokesman for the store.

Inevitably, Pearl gets chided for leaving authors out. While walking down George Street during the Sydney Writers’ Festival in May, a woman approached her about omitting William Maxwell, the late writer and editor of The New Yorker magazine. “Leaving him out was a huge mistake,” says Pearl.

Pearl says she finishes fewer than half the books she starts. For some readers, that has been her most valuable advice: She gives them permission to stop slogging through books that don’t captivate them. Her rule for any reader under 50 is to give a book 50 pages before giving up on it. Readers over 50 subtract their age from 100 for the number of pages.

After a stint reviewing books for the Library Journal magazine, Pearl tired of being a critic. “I just thought, ‘Why am I wasting my time on books I’m not liking?'”
…
Pearl’s next project is a reading guide for children, tentatively titled “Book Crush.”

Later this year, her stops will include a writers’ conference in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and a booksellers’ gathering in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Before that, she will sign books at Archie McPhee’s, the Seattle novelty store where the [Pearl-inspired] Librarian doll hangs on a wall alongside action figures of Jesus, Einstein and Shakespeare.

It outsells them all.

Update: Speaking of shushing librarians, how long has it been since you saw Ghostbusters? I saw it again recently at the Sunshine Cinema’s midnight movie series, and it was if anything funnier than the first time. An excellent choice for reunions with your Murray-appreciating peers.

Seattle Action-Hero Librarian Stokes Reading Habit [Bloomberg]

I like this David Trinidad poem, among many others, on/in the brand-new and deeply appealing Coconut, edited by Bruce Covey. So nice to look at! So fun to click around! I’ve been waiting for something like this. Don’t miss Shanna Compton and Laurel Snyder in issue one, too.

Bad enough that they’re notorious unionbusters, but I also just happened on this from News Hounds, the Fox watchdog, about a strange shortage of books last fall: Seymour Hersh’s New Book? You Won’t Find It at Borders! Could have been a glitch, obviously, but Borders bosses haven’t always been the most trustworthy of behemoth bookstore boors.

Categories: Hersh, Borders

How silly I feel not to have been reading Filmbrain all along! My eye jumped immediately to this post about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:

When talk of a remake first surfaced some years back, naturally Filmbrain was full of woe — why would they bother? When it was revealed that Tim Burton would be directing, there were glimmers of hope — surely the man who brought us Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Beetle Juice was an ideal candidate (actually, Filmbrain thought David Lynch would be a better choice). Then the rumors started flying around the Internet — robot Oompa Loompas, Marilyn Manson as Wonka, etc. Then came Big Fish, which was syrupy-coated Burton, and a tremendous letdown for many of his fans. Would he ever be able to return to his darker, more playful former self?

Well, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is finally here, and the good news is that it’s far, far better than Filmbrain imagined it would be. However… more.

Here’s Anthony Lane’s review of the movie; Lane makes some good jokes, which suggests that he’s in air-conditioning somewhere. He’s got the book clearly in mind, too, and that makes for some sound criticism; after noting Burton’s dizzying visual style, Lane writes: “Roald Dahl was a man of speed. His imagination was fat as a pig, but his literary method was lean…. Dahl inherited from Dickens a direct feed into the terrors and wishful thinking of the young.” It’s very good. I’ve generally preferred Denby, but this review is as light and well-made as a Cadbury Flake.

I’m sad to say I can’t say the same about the recent piece on Dahl by Margaret Talbot, which I did not like at all. (This isn’t a blanket dismissal of Talbot; her numerous praiseworthy affiliations aside, I’ve liked stuff of hers.) I’m supposed to be packing for Canada right now, so I won’t elaborate except to say she can’t seem to figure out which side to take on the several and not very compelling Dahl Controversies she names. If I were writing a longer post, I’d count up her use of phrases like “most parents…” and “the average adult…” and “generally, readers…” I don’t think I need to explain why I was so startled to read even one sentence of the kind in The New Yorker. (OK, one example: “Dahl is brilliant at evoking the childhood obsession with candy, which most adults can recall only vaguely.” I think Hilary Liftin and Steve Almond would have something to say about that.)

It’s a frustrating piece because it’s about something I love—Dahl, his books, his characters, the transition from child fan to adult recommender/parent/reader—but, like a Tootsie Pop I encountered in the mid-’80s, it lacks a center. You know how sometimes you get the sense a story was rushed into print for some reason, or the author submitted a rewrite at the last minute and the editor had to scramble to smooth it out again, or the piece was constructed from a bunch of emails and notes and never quite jelled into something with a beginning, middle, and end? I have no idea what the tale is here, but something’s amiss, and I was disheartened by the result. Not to mention that Talbot more than buries the lede—Jeremy Treglown’s charge that Dahl was “a fantasist, an anti-Semite, a bully and a self-publicizing trouble-maker” is listed way after far fluffier objections. (Here’s a simple but interesting perspective on the various serious charges against Dahl; this Beliefnet article lays out the charges concisely and responds thoughtfully.) And comparing Dahl’s short fiction for adults to “Twilight Zone” episodes, even favorably (as Talbot does here), is an injustice to his best nuanced, deliciously sadistic stories of sex, deception, tattoos, cruelty, pickpockets, greyhounds, marriage, and corrupt antiques dealers. I’ll elaborate when I can, because this piece is a real anomaly, and it could have been a pip. Odd.

As for the movie, I’m slightly wary—who decided it should be another head film?—but of course I’ll see it. There’s a terrific e-mail forum in the current issue of PEN America in which Jonathan Franzen, Hendrik Hertzberg, Tony Hiss, Mindy Aloff, and Mark Alan Stamaty, among others, submit their favorite movie adaptations of works of literature. Totally satisfying.

Here’s my relationship to eBay: I bid on things other people don’t know to want (the lesser-known esoterica of Milton Klonsky, Lester Gaba’s soap-carving oevre, books by my great-grandmother). That means the auctions stay under $10, and on the rare occasions I bid, I always win. So when I want something this badly, it’s almost a shock that there are other people in line driving up the price beyond poet-critic-blogger capacity. This, of course, is no ordinary auction: It’s the first issue of The New Yorker, February 21, 1925, and I can’t have it. (The reason I haven’t been posting about it since it went up: selfishly hoarding just in case.) For skeptics, the seller has posted this exchange:

Q: Is this the original or the reprint of the original? What are the entries on the copyright page?

A: This is not a reproduction, but is one of the few, if not the only first issue extant, or in private hands, I think, unless Peter Fleischman or his heirs has one. I’m not sure what the questioner means by the entries on the copyright page, but here’s a try: There is a box lower left on page 30 headed The New Yorker. It goes on to say “The New Yorker is published every Tuesday by the F-R Publishing corp. 25 West 45th Street. H. W. Ross, president; Raoul Fleischman, vice-president; Robert W. Collins, secretary and treasurer. Etc., etc. If the questioner is asking about other things appearing on that page, above the box mentioned there are two columns of classifieds headed “Where to Shop” with a drawing of a Rolls Royce and people with packages, and a column to their right called “Jottings About Town,” and under it “A New York Dictionary.” Does this answer the questions?

And, with the description, a note on the origin:

First issue of “the New Yorker” magazine, February 21, 1925, with Rea Irvin’s famous cover, reproduced (somewhat) annually. Cover nearly separated with some soilure. Inside somewhat faded, but unblemished otherwise. 32 pages, 8 1/2 “ x 12”

Note: since this item has been posted the cover has separated. This issue is guaranteed to be the 1st issue, not a 1953 reproduction or reprint. Originally owned by New York artist Alexander Brook.

There are 10 hours left in the auction (currenly at $200; starting bid $50), and if you win, email me. I’ll come over and, solemnly, salute. No, not you, you spendy monster, the magazine. Good luck, and remember the power of the barter. Just something to keep in mind.

Update: It’s still at $200. Six hours left. Heretofore unknown wealthy great-uncle waiting for the right moment to contact me with the combination for the top-secret safe containing my rightful fortune, perhaps now would be a good time?

Update update: $205. If there’s the usual last-second pillowfight, who knows how the feathers will fly?